Transcription
Hey guys, Mark here. In this video, I'm going to show you how to achieve levels of focus so deep it makes you immune to distraction. And if you can't even finish this video that is about focus, then that teaches me everything I need to know about you and you are cooked.
This video is not going to be super woo woo and how you need to follow your passion. No, none of that. This is going to be super duper practical, tactical advice that you can implement the moment that this video is over. If you actually do what is in this video, I guarantee you will get more done in less time. And I am living proof. For the last 8 years, I have worked anywhere from 10 to 14 hours per day, every single day, with very few exceptions, without burning out using these exact strategies in this video.
First, you need to understand why you've been failing for so long to actually stay focused and why most advice is just complete [ __ ]. The reason why you fail ultimately is because all these strategies, all these other videos on YouTube talk about in order to become focused, you have to increase your willpower. Basically, you just have to try harder. And after doing that so often for so long, I realized that this is a complete lie that people tell you so that you stay trapped in these states of being super distracted and never getting any real meaningful work done. You're basically kind of following the David Gogggins method and just using pure discipline to try to stay focused. But the problem is using discipline in and of itself is a cognitively demanding task that takes away from the work that should be poured into doing something productive. True focus is simply the absence of distraction. It's not trying to be a maximalist and have a pomodoro timer and all these other tiny little cheat codes, so call them. It's literally just to reduce and eliminate all the [ __ ] that's getting in the way of focus, which sounds relatively easy, but it's actually a little complicated. Hence the reason I'm making this video in the first place.
So, what we'll call for this video true focus really has four kind of steps. And if you follow these four steps, you'll get into the deepest possible states, not just once, but every single day repeatably because you literally just have a formula. First is called preloading, which is basically what you do before you sit down. Second is activation that triggers you to get into that state. Third is immersion, which is where you actually maintain that deep state of focus, what people call deep work or deliberate practice. And then fourth is the exit protocol. If you don't close that loop properly, then cool, you got deep work done once. to achieve true focus once, but you can't do it tomorrow or the day after, every single day following.
So, let's talk about preloading first. The first thing that you want to do is create something that I call dopamine debt. We all know this neurotransmitter that's associated with pleasure, with motivation, with actually achieving things. Dopamine debt is essentially where you try to eliminate all of the dopamine that you have accured throughout the day or even if it's first thing in the morning to essentially set your baseline level of dopamine so freaking low. so incredibly low that anything that you do afterwards is going to feel so much better than what you just did before. We are starved in this world of true boredom. Every second of the day, we are just thrown constant dopamineergic activities with social media, porn, with food, with relationships, every single freaking minute of the day. And dopamine, you know, typically es and flows. And if you are like doom scrolling on IG and your dopamine levels are continually getting spiked and spiked and come back down and spike and come back down and then you try to get into this super deep state of focus. No, of course that's not going to work because your brain is comparing this deep work that you're doing to this super dopamineergic activity of scrolling social media. It's not going to be a smooth transition. So instead what you're going to do is acrue dopamine debt which is literally you sit on your bed wherever where there is zero stimuli around you. What I mean by this is no phone, no music, nothing. Bonus points if you do this with no sunlight because sunlight, as many of you know, does increase your dopamine. However, that's better though. Allow sunlight. You know, I don't personally do sunlight, but I'll allow it. You're going to sit in silence. You're going to stare at a wall and do nothing for 10 minutes before you even trigger this state of deep work and true focus.
Now, this dopamine debt that you're building up is essentially intentional boredom. And as I said, because of, you know, especially the invention of the smartphone, but everything else in modern society, everything is instant. And that doesn't really go well with the natural way that dopamine is supposed to be released in your brain. So, you're essentially building in boredom on purpose so that right before you get into your deep work states, it's not going to feel like you're swimming upstream compared to if you were like scrolling reels right before you get into your deep work. It's it's going to not be easy. You may stay focused for like 10 minutes and then you're going to lose because your attention span is reactive to whatever you were doing before after you have completed your dopamine debt. What you want to do next is craft your environment so that everything is conducive to true focus feeling really really good and easy. If you want to have a habit that you genuinely stick to, it should be something that is satisfying that is easy and that is initially small enough so that just doing it triggers your sense of dopamine and you want to continue to do it. It's not an uphill battle. You want to continue.
So, what I do with my environment is I want it to be simple and satisfying. If you know anything about me, you know I am very, very OCD and autistic about the setup around me. Everything on my desk right now has a purpose. I researched it meticulously. There's a very specific reason that I have it exactly in the place that I do. Most of us spend the majority of our life working. If we're not sleeping, typically the average human is probably working. And what that means for you is you want to make your environment actually enjoyable to be in. A really small example of this is the tech that you have all around your desk. For example, I am like super nerdy about mechanical keyboards. Like if it has a very specific tactile response in terms of how the you know the the switches and the key caps are moving together, it makes me want to work more. This cost me you know maybe like 130 bucks this keyboard that I'm using right now. But I view this as an investment, as crazy as that sounds, because if I want to sit down at my desk and work, it is going to be so much easier for me to get work done. Every single thing in your environment should follow that exact same principle. That is essentially the satisfying piece. The simple piece is you don't want to have a ton of ton of [ __ ] on your desk. You'll if you were able to see my desk, all you would see is my keyboard and my mouse and my monitor and that is all. I don't have any distractions, anything else on my desk at any point in time. That's how psychotic I am about keeping distractions not just in my mind away from me, but also on my physical space. So, this is where you can kind of personalize it to you. Like I said, I kind of nerd out about a few stupid, you know, lowcost tech purchases that I have on my desk, but make it specific to you. The point is, you really want to make it satisfying and enjoyable for you to sit down and work. So, just the moment that you sit in your chair, you genuinely feel good and you don't want to get up and you just want to sit down and work.
Now, before we move into how to actually stay in these true focus states, this deep work, the state of focus, um I want to talk about something that I hear nobody talk about, but it's energy matching your task. Throughout your day, you have a number of things that you have to get done. And some of them, you know, they're essentially going to kind of fall on a spectrum of super duper leftrain dominant activities. For example, like I spend a lot of time running ads for myself and other people, and that means that I spend a lot of time looking at data. That is a leftbrain dominant activity. I also spend a lot of time on creative activities which is right brain dominant. Now the right and left brain thing has kind of been debunked a little bit but the point is different kinds of tasks require different types of energy. If you're writing copy for your newsletter, a new VSSL, a new creative, a new ad, if you're in a super duper low energetic state, you are not going to create good material. No artist really has ever made creative work without getting into the right energetic state. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to be in a super good mood. Many of the best authors in history, they're known to be tortured, but even those torturous states of mind, those torturous states of energy are incredibly powerful and they're able to channel those into their work. Every energy that you have throughout the day should serve a purpose. Some of it is going to be highly energetic, some of it is going to be highly logical. So, you should be planning out your day based off it, right? So what I do for example, typically the times where I have the most amount of energy is right after I get back from the gym. I have all these endorphins flowing through my body. My blood flow is very high. My energy is very high. So if I'm doing creative work, I want to do it then. On the other hand, if I'm spending time running ads and I need to be super duper analytical and data driven, I'll do that way before my workout. So it doesn't really matter what it is for you. Everybody kind of knows when they're like the most locked in throughout their day. And depending on the the task that you're doing, you should align that with the state of energy that you are in.
So here's how you can actually implement this because you know you can kind of like feel it, but if you actually track it, it's going to make it so much easier. Track your energy for 3 to 5 days. Literally every hour, we're going to rate your energy on a scale of 1 to 10. Number two, you're going to identify when you naturally have the highest peak energy. Number three, you will ruthlessly protect those peak hours for your most important work. whatever that is, whatever is going to move your business forward, make you the most amount of money, improve your creative work, whatever's, you know, kind of that northstar for you. Protect those hours like it's your [ __ ] life. Number four, you're going to batch all the other, you know, low energetic task throughout the day. And finally, never, never, never waste these [ __ ] tasks on your most energetic windows throughout the day.
Now, let's move on to the second phase, which is activation. All this means if you study kind of the the neuroscience especially of building a really good habit because that's what you want this to be ultimately getting into these deep states of focus should be a habit. Every dominant habit and even better every dominant addiction it has a trigger. What you need really is essentially a biological trigger that signals to your brain it's time to [ __ ] lock in. And I think the rule of thumb here in general to have something that genuinely sticks is you should have a trigger that is hyper unique to you. something that's even a little bit quirky and that if you told other people like you would low-key be a little bit embarrassed. I think the best example of this is going to the gym. A lot of people genuinely don't like going to the gym. Many times I don't like going to the gym, but as soon as I get this one psychological trigger, my body needs to go out. And for me, that one trigger is beta alanine. Beta alanine, for those who don't know, is a very common ingredient in pre-workout. I literally bought a mass bag of beta alanine and I'll like sometimes double or triple dose my beta alanine have up to like 10 to 12 grams of beta alanine and it's the thing that most people hate but I personally love that gives you kind of that sensation that spiders are crawling underneath your skin. It's great but it's gotten to the point where if I feel that of course I'm going to want to go work out and it literally doesn't go away until you work out unless you wait multiple hours. This is the most interesting thing. I have been training for so many years that even if I don't take pre-workout, which is rare, but even if I don't, I still get this sensation of tingling as I am walking to the gym because it has just been hardcoded into my physiology that as soon as I start walking on the path to the gym, I start feeling this sensation.
Another personal example that I use, more specifically related to work and productivity and being focused, is having bone broth in the morning. Not only does it help me hit my macros by being one of the most anabolic natural things that you could possibly consume, but of course it has a very specific taste that if I continue to have it every single cuz I I look forward to it. If I continue to have it every single time before I get into my deep work, my brain is just hardwiring that loop over and over and over again until the first thing that I'm thinking of when I wake up is when can I have my bone broth? Now again, don't be afraid to do something kind of weird here. The goal is to have something that is highly sensory so that as soon as your body experiences this feeling, you smell these things. Use all of your senses. That's where the word sensory comes from. Using all of your senses, vision, audio, touch, all of these, use them all together to create a super super strong cue. Have it immediately before you deep work. And then never have it at any other time. And as you continue to do this time and time again, it's going to get to the point where as soon as you have this cue, you're basically already in a hyperfocused state.
As a little bonus before we move on to the next section, guys, obviously if you are watching this video right now or if you've seen any of my videos, you know that I always work in the dark. I try to work in pure darkness and I have blackout shades literally like taping my windows that no light can possibly get through. And that's not by accident. The reason why I do that is because of something called peripheral blackout. Your peripheral vision accounts for roughly 90% of your total vision. So the reason that I have, you know, these blackout shades is because I'm trying to reduce the amount of information that my eyes have to take in and try to configure and make sense of so that I can put more and more energy into what is in front of me. And the only way that you can really do that is to make sure that there's nothing around you that you can truly see aside from your screen. So, if you want to know why I've been working in the dark for so long, that's one of the reasons. I'm literally just trying to get rid of all of this unnecessary additional information so that I can put more energy into what is directly in front of me and stay focused better for longer. Now, of course, you don't have to work in the dark like I do. Maybe you just sit in the corner so that the only thing that you really have to look at is a freaking wall. Maybe you build some some freaking goggles. It blinds out everything, you know, like a racehorse. Doesn't really matter. Feel free to get creative and and be weird like me.
Now, let's move on to phase three. How do you actually stay in these deep states of focus without losing it? Without getting distracted, without feeling like you're hitting a creative block or kind of like going against the grain. Step number one is you got to be bricked up. A brick is a tiny physical device that you can buy. I'm not affiliated with the company. I just happen to use the product and like it where you block off certain apps that you can't use on your phone and there's no way to get out of it unless you have this physical thing near you. You can't unlock those freaking apps unless you use like an emergency unlock and you only have a few of those. Don't ask me how I know that. Again, the point here is to make distraction impossible. Not to make it difficult, to make it impossible. You're trying to block the [ __ ] exit so that the only place for your brain to go is directly in front of you doing focused and productive work.
Number two, let's talk about music. If you want to get into these true focused states, you want to once again be able to use all of your senses. And using your sense of sound obviously is one of those senses. So I want to begin this section. I love music. I want to begin this section by saying this is highly variable and dependent on you and your personal interest. I have weird [ __ ] that works for me. You'll have weird [ __ ] that works for you. Some people want to work in 100% silence. Other people want to have very specific music. Other people want to have music with lyrics. find what works best for you. In my opinion, there's essentially two sides to, you know, kind of the music piece of productivity. The first side is essentially what the science says. And what the science says is that there's a few different types of beats that you can listen to to get into higher states of cognition. For example, if you are a classical type listening to a type of classical that is called Baroque music, where I believe the BPM is directly at the same BPM typically of your heart when it's at rest. So, it feels very very natural that way. I did this very very frequently for the few years that I spent in college and it worked really well for me. Another thing you can do is use binaural beats. Binaural beats actually sounds like music but in the background of the music there's different frequencies being played in both your right ear and your left ear. And this difference in frequencies puts you in a state of what's called hemisync. If you know anything about the Gateway project, you know this was studied decades and decades ago. and they figured out that in the military that you can reach these incredibly deep states of consciousness through having hemisync. This is typically one of my go-tos. And then the last one in terms of what the science says is using what is called isocchronic tones. Isocchronic tones is essentially binaural beats, but it is stripped of the music. So it's literally just two tones that are played constantly. It's barely even music. Like to quantify it as music is low-key disrespectful to music. But I'll be honest, it works. So if you listen to for example beta wave isocchronic tone, this is a specific wave in your brain that is associated with higher levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex. I actually like it simply because of how aggressive it is. I'll typically only do this in intervals of like 60 to 90 minutes because as soon as you take out your earbuds or whatever you're using, your brain will feel like it's vibrating. Literally, I promise if you try it, you'll get what I mean. So that's what the science says.
The other side of this is what does your soul say? What is the music that you listen to that puts your soul on fire? This is what gets me into those very deep states of productivity specifically for more creative work. I had a copywriting mentor of mine who every time he would listen to copy. He would be listening to Jay-Z and he would play it at the highest volume that he can. He's moving his body. He's feeling good and he's literally letting the emotions of music flow through his body from his brain into his body onto his keyboard with the words that he's typing on the screen. Everybody has a different artist. Maybe it's Jay-Z, maybe it's Rihanna, maybe it's we don't know, you know, everyone has a different one. For me, for whatever reason, I cannot listen to music with lyrics and stay focused. It is super difficult for me. My mind just like grabs onto the lyrics and starts to listen to those instead of like focusing on the work that I have in front of me. So, for my soul music, I have a few favorites. Number one is going to be vapor wave or synth wave, which is kind of this futuristic, retrofuturistic kind of music. Think of like the almost like the Tron soundtrack is a good way to think of this music, but I could listen that [ __ ] all day. Another one is liquid D&B. Liquid D&B, jungle D&B, atmospheric DMB, any kind of those DMBs I could also listen to all day and get into phenomenal energetic states of focus.
Now, the third and final piece we're going to talk about when it comes to immersion and staying in these deep states of focus is using constraints. All this means is you are going to be setting non-negotiable times for you to complete a task. Many of you have probably heard of something called Parkinson's law. Parkinson's law is essentially a law that says the work that you have to do will expand to the time that you allocate to getting that project done. For example, the most the most common example is people that go to college and they have to write this big essay by the end of the year. All of the students believe that, oh, I have the whole year and then they all put it off into the very last second and it only takes them like 2 or 3 days. If you actually just set aside 2 or 3 days in the beginning, you would have been done within the first 2 or 3 days. So, the point is that you should set aggressive timelines for yourself instead of saying, "Oh, I have all day to do this." No, literally create constraints so that you are forced to complete stuff faster. And then if you want to get really crazy, you can create essentially consequences for not getting it done within that time. Another really common one from some productivity guys is to automatically donate to a super [ __ ] up charity that you absolutely don't support in the name of trying to get work done. Because a lot of times we don't do [ __ ] as human beings until there's a clear consequence if we don't do that thing.
All right, let's move on to the fourth and final phase, which I like to call offline gains. Offline gains is essentially what are you doing when you're not working that will make it easier for you to work in the future. Let's start off nice and simple with the Pomodoro technique. Pomodoro technique is setting a timer for anywhere from 25 to 90 minutes and working only for that allotted time and then taking a segment of time off of that. My personal favorite in terms of like the amount of time is typically 50 minutes on with 10 minutes off. Now, most you guys are familiar with this, but this is the thing most people miss. It's actually more important what you do when you're not actually working. That'll make the work easier in the future. I see so many people that will just go on their freaking phones in doom scroll during their pomodoro like time off and that going back to the first point just makes it so much harder. The point is after you complete your block of work, you go and do nothing. You go and do no kind of like spiking of your dopamine kind of behaviors. Everything stays completely baseline. You could just go walk, stare out a window. You could go for a walk period. Just don't partake in any activities that are going to have these super harsh spikes of dopamine like this. All right? Dopamine in and of itself is not a bad thing. What is bad is these crazy spikes like this. What you do want your dopamine rewards to look like in your brain is more of like a logarithmic curve like this where it has an extended increase and delay over time instead of just like violently spiking and coming back down and violently spiking and coming back down.
The second thing that you can do to increase your offline gains is something that I recently learned about actually called the wakeful rest replay protocol. So this was a study that was conducted where essentially having these micro bursts of rest periods interspersed during your practice significantly increased hippocampus and neoortex activity in this case. Basically what it is saying is if you take these periods of rest during your work, you actually are able to learn more and improve at stuff faster compared to just trying to raw dog it and work for like 6 hours straight without any kind of break. That's part of the reason why Pomodoro method is so powerful. But one of the things to really put this on steroids is to visualize the work that you were doing to cement it in your brain. I'm sure many of you have seen the power of visualization in general. It's kind of a highly debated thing because some of it is just straight [ __ ] and some of it is incredibly powerful. And this is one of those things that is legitimately backed by science. If you are able to visualize yourself doing something, that's pretty good. If you're able to actually do it, that's also very good. A little bit better. If you use both together, however, that is how you can get freakishly good at stuff freakishly fast. So imagine if I was trying to learn how to play the guitar and I was practicing a specific lick. I played a few times for 10 seconds and then I take a 10-second break just thinking, visualizing myself playing that lick perfectly. And then 10 seconds of me practicing the lick over and over and over again. That is a legit like scienceback strategy for you to get freakishly good at anything. And you can apply that to your work.
And finally, to make this work feel incredibly easy and to fully complete the habit loop, you have to have some kind of dopamine reward after the work is complete. So, what I was saying previously about the pomodora method, right? You work for 50 minutes on and then you go for a walk afterwards. So, going on a walk is a great way for you to release dopamine in a healthy way to complete the dopamine reward. Another good example is doing meditation. Just doing 20 push-ups. It really doesn't matter, guys. As you can see, the point is it's something small, but also healthy and not just going to [ __ ] doom scroll so that all the hard work that you did of getting in the right state, doing the music, all the, you know, nine yards, then you just ruin it at the end without completing the loop. The point is to build this as a habit. Even better, build it as an addiction. There should be some reward at the end, some payoff, or else it's going to feel hard every single time. Pause. You know what I'm saying?
So, if you actually do follow everything in this video, I know it was quite a bit, but I told you it was going to be tactical. And if you do follow it, I promise you, you will be getting into states of focus that you never knew was even possible. Not only that, you'll be able to do it every single freaking day. Other than that, guys, that's going to be it. If you like content like this and you also like business, running ads, and other stuff like that, I happen to have an email list. Totally free. You can click the first link in the description to join. Other than that, guys, thank you so much for watching this video. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.